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Two Speeches at the §lueer?s Jubilee 

London, 1897 

By IVhitelaw Reid 





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no. 21520 

LIBRARY 

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DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 



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Two hundred and fifty copies of this 
edition were printed at the De Vinne 
Press in the month of August, 1897. 

This copy is No.. 




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TWO SPEECHES 

AT THE 

QUEEN'S JUBILEE 

LONDON 
1897 



BY 

WHITE LAW RE ID 

THE SPECIAL AMBASSADOR OF THE UNITED STATES 



NEW YORK 

THE DE VINNE PRESS 

1897 




*'y- of t^i> 












AMERICA 
AND ENGLAND 



Speech 

at the American Dinner in London, 

July 5 (for Sunday, July 4), 1897. 

YOUR reference to the Special 
Ambassador is most kind, and I 
thank you. But we are in a sad 
mood, as you know, at the Special 
Embassy, and nothing but a sense 
of duty could have brought me, even 
on the Fourth of July and among 
Americans in London, to a banquet 
in the evening after following to the 



2 America and England 

grave in the morning the sole child 
of one of my associates. The brave 
Admiral's splendid war-ship bore for 
him no armor against fate ; and re- 
calling the proud pageant in which 
he has just been so worthily rep- 
resenting our nation, we can only 
utter again the exclamation of 
Edmund Burke over another sud- 
denly yawning grave, "What shad- 
ows we are, and what shadows we 
pursue ! " 

Let me venture to add what I 
know will touch every American 
heart, here and at home, that Ad- 
miral Miller, in his desolate loneli- 
ness this evening on the Brooklyn, 
has received a gracious message of 
tender, womanly sympathy from 
Her Majesty, the Queen. 



Fourth of July, 1897 3 

It is an interesting coincidence 
that we pass immediately and not 
unnaturally, even in London, from 
the celebration of the Queen's Jubi- 
lee to the celebration of the Fourth 
of July. ["Hear, hear."] The one sup- 
plements and completes the other; 
the two together round out the 
record, warrant the recognition the 
world is extending to the progress 
of the Anglo-Saxon race, and em- 
phasize the blessings its amazing 
advances have bestowed upon man- 
kind. [Applause.] 

Quite possibly, if the wise and 
good Queen had been in her grand- 
father's place, or if the Queen's son 
had been there, things might have 
been different. ["Hear, hear."] But it 
is far better as it is. The colossal 



4 America and England 

development of the Republic would 
have been possible on no colonial 
lines the world had then ever seen. 
Its benefits have been reflected back 
upon the motherland, and, under the 
improved policy that resulted, are 
distinctly traceable in the superb 
growth and affectionate loyalty of 
the vast British Empire of to-day. 
We have been therefore, and we 
have had the right to be, proud of 
the Jubilee — almost as proud as 
the English are themselves ; and as 
proud of the wonderful history that 
made it possible. We can have no 
jealousy of their greatness, . their 
power, their world-wide renown. If 
it is not ours, it belongs to the 

family. [Laughter and applause.] They 

carry elsewhere what they gave us 



Fourth of July, i8gy 5 

— the same civilization, the same 
reverence for law, the same Anglo- 
Saxon love for order and justice 
and liberty; and they can take 
no right and lawful step to spread 
these blessings which we shall not 
applaud. 

But let me not be misunderstood. 
The millennium has not quite 
dawned. The American has not 
abandoned the traits of his race any 
more than the Englishman. We are 
to-day the most peaceful great nation 
on the globe, and there was never a 
period in our history when there 
was less popular desire for territo- 
rial aggrandizement. But we are 
Anglo-Saxon still. [Applause.] It fol- 
lows, of course, that our own clear 
rights within the legitimate sphere 



6 America and England 

of our influence will be jealously 
guarded; and that the consent of 
no other nation to our exercise of 
them will be held essential. [Prolonged 

applause.] 

During the last week nothing has 
been more interesting than the evi- 
dent English welcome to American 
sympathy, or the occasional remark, 
" Your people don't like us as well 
as we wish they did; why is it?" 
Well, perhaps there is sometimes 
some warrant for saying that. Sir 
Wilfrid Laurier talked very frankly 
on the subject the other night; and 
while not wholly accepting his- point 
of view, I need add nothing to the 
explanations he gave.* It is idle to 

* See extracts from Sir Wilfrid Laurier's speech, 
pages 26-30. 



Fourth of July, 1897 7 

ignore the fact that from time to 
time serious differences have arisen. 
It is equally idle to imagine that 
either nation will fail to maintain 
what it thinks right. He is no friend 
to either who asserts or hints it. 
But we never forget our relation- 
ship. ["Hear, hear."] We may have 
family jars in the future as in the 
past. God forbid it; and God grant 
that if they do come, we may show 
that we are at last, on both sides 
of the water, civilized enough and 
Christian enough to settle them 
without fighting with our own blood. 

[Applause.] 

Our people may perhaps be some- 
times sensitive, and sometimes bit- 
ter. Possibly those traits of the 
race survive yet in England also. 



8 America and England 

But it is not best to attach too much 
importance to superficial indications. 
You do not judge a noble river en- 
tirely by the drift and eddies on the 
surface. Below, the strong, steady 
current is sweeping on in its natural 
course, unmoved by surface commo- 
tions. [Applause.] 

Do not forget that out of the three 
serious wars of our national exist- 
ence two have been with England, 
while in the third England's attitude 
was at least open to the interpreta- 
tion Sir Wilfrid Laurier placed upon 

it. [Stir and sensation.] Yet Such is the 

real temper of the American people 
that, when this last war ended in 
complete surrender, not one human 
life was sacrificed in punishment, 
nor were even political disabili- 



Fourth of July, i8gy 9 

ties long maintained. ["Hear, hear."] 
How easily any lingering bitterness 
over the first war, or any of them, 
may be swept away has been often 
seen. Surely, Englishmen cannot 
have forgotten Commodore Tatnall, 
who saw English sailors entrapped 
and slaughtered in an Asiatic sea, 
and without any possible warrant 
rushed to the rescue with the sole 
excuse : " I can't stand that ; blood 
is thicker than water ! " [Applause.] 
No more can Commodore Pearson 
be forgotten, who, under somewhat 
similar circumstances, did a similar 
thing. And surely English sailors, 
riding safely on the receding wave 
out of the terrors of Samoa, can 
never cease to hear the cheers, ex- 
ulting in their escape, that burst 



io America and England 
from the throats of American sailors 

about tO die ! [Prolonged applause.] 

That is the genuine American 
feeling when stirred to its pro- 
foundest depths [Applause]; that the 
feeling which now warrants Whit- 
tier's prophecy of the time — 

When closer strand shall lean to strand, 
While meet, beneath saluting flags, 
The eagle of our mountain crags, 

The lion of our motherland. [Applause.] 

That is the feeling that led the Chief 
Magistrate of our country to send 
me here, accompanied by an Admiral 
on his flag-ship, and by the General 
of our army [Applause], to bear from 
him a letter to Her Royal and 
Imperial Majesty. 

It was that which gave me war- 



Fourth of July, iSgy 1 1 

rant, on behalf of the President and 
people of the Republic, to present 
personally their respectful congratu- 
lations and most earnest good wishes 
to the Sovereign, not merely of 
longest reign and widest sway, but, 
in their judgment, of most beneficent 
influence and best beloved in the 
whole long history of the English 
monarchy and the Anglo-Saxon 

race. [" Hear, hear."] 

The President especially wished 
Her Majesty to believe that nothing 
can ever permit the government or 
the people of the United States to 
forget that at a critical period in 
their history, the preservation of 
peace between the two nations was, 
as they think, largely due to the 
gracious influence exerted by the 
3 



12 America and England 

Queen, with the aid of the lamented 
Prince Consort. [Loud applause.] We 
may well hope that the memory of 
that act was not the least pleasant 
of the thronging recollections that 
added to the joy of this unparal- 
leled anniversary. 

Whatever the passing feeling of 
the moment toward England, there 
has never been a time within my 
recollection when England's Sover- 
eign was not familiarly known in 
America as the " Good Queen" — 
never a time when she was not re- 
spected and admired — never a time 
since the Trent affair when she was 

not loved. [Applause.] 

It was but three years before she 
came to the throne that Daniel 
Webster uttered his well-known 



Fourth of July, iSgy 13 

apostrophe to Great Britain: "A 
power which has dotted over the 
surface of the whole globe with her 
possessions and military posts, whose 
morning drum-beat, following the 
sun, and keeping company with the 
hours, circles the earth with one 
continuous and unbroken strain of 
the martial airs of England." 

To-day Mr. Webster might phrase 
it a little differently. The Victo- 
rian era has spread out its glitter- 
ing record of sixty years, and Great 
Britain is a power now which, in- 
stead of merely dotting, has largely 
overspread the surface of the globe. 
The sound which a week or two ago 
followed the sun and kept company 
with the hours, circled the earth with 
a sweeter strain than the martial airs 



14 America and England 

of England. It circled the earth with 
a strain in which the whole Anglo- 
Saxon race united, while the world 
applauded — the strain of "God Save 

the Queen." [Prolonged applause, the whole 
company rising and cheering.] 



ENGLAND'S VISITORS 

Speech 

at the cordwainers' banquet, 

July 8. 

THERE is a Scriptural approval, 
I think, for the man who said 
he would n't and then did. I trust 
the theological opinions of the Mas- 
ter and Wardens of the Worshipful 
Company of Cordwainers may be 
sufficiently liberal to permit the 
stretching of that approval to cover 
my present case. Having first flatly 
refused to speak, here I am speak- 



1 6 The Colonials and 

ing [Laughter] — with no possible 
excuse excepting that I shall be 
brief. 

Your toast " To our Visitors " 
means on this occasion, I am told, 
the Colonials and the Americans. 
One of our poets, who has met a 
quite extraordinary appreciation on 
this side of the water, — Mr. Walt 
Whitman, — once defined the duty 
you thus put upon me in another 
way. He said, " We celebrate our- 
selves." Now the Colonials may 
perhaps venture to undertake that 
task, but as for me, I hesitate at it. 
We have high authority — no less 
than that of the accomplished regu- 
lar American ambassador here — for 
the assurance that our national 
flower, fitting America as perfectly 



The Americans 17 

as the thistle fits Scotland, is the 
modest, unobtrusive violet ! [Laughter 

and applause.] 

There is another difficulty, and in 
this I know I may speak for the 
Colonials as well as for ourselves. 
We are visitors, of course; but we 
have to pinch ourselves to keep 
from thinking, all the while, that 

we are at home. ["Hear, hear."] 

I may venture to speak for all 
your visitors on one other point. 
You have drawn out before us, day 
by day, a splendid historic pageant. 
You have had a wonderful and a 
worthy celebration of an anniversary 
altogether unique in the history of 
the world's civilization. But the 
finest thing you have shown us was 
not the brilliant military display, 



1 8 The Colonials and 

here or at Aldershot. It was not 
that glittering procession of rulers 
and princes and nobles, of represen- 
tatives of the four quarters of the 
globe, and of all their governments, 
that wound its stately way through 
millions of your people up to the 

Steps Of St. Paul's. ["Hear, hear. "] It 

was not the colossal concentration 
of sea-power at Spithead, that 
proved how easily and how rrfag- 
nificently Britannia still rules the 
waves. It was not even the amaz- 
ing order of London, and the magic 
control over surging thousands that 
lay in the gentlest wave of. a single 
policeman's hand. Far overshadow- 
ing all these, the one great fact of 
the whole Jubilee was the obvious, 
the profound, the touching devotion 



The Americans 19 

of the people — of all the people — 

to their Queen. ["Hear, hear."] 

In this, too, no observer could fail 
to note that the colonies vied with 
the mother-country. Our friends 
the Premiers here are in some re- 
pects more English than the Eng- 
lish themselves. They are proud, 
as they have a right to be, of their 
British origin and connection and 
loyalty. Long may it last ! But 
they cannot escape their environ- 
ment. Climate, circumstances, the 
struggle with the forces of nature 
and of savage man, have done their 
work on you as they have on us. 
You will not take it as unfriendly or 
uncomplimentary for a Yankee to 
say, "After all, what Yankees you 
have become ! " [Laughter.] 

4 



20 The Colonials and 

Still, the race which peoples these 
isles is no doubt in some ways an 
unchanging one. Let us hope that, 
to whatever distant clime it goes, 
whatever fever in the blood may be 
engendered by pioneer conflict or 
tropic sun, it will always remain un- 
changed in those things which lie at 
the very foundation of all it has done 
in the world that was worth doing. 
I do not speak now merely of its 
liberty, and the watchful care that 
must preserve it. That is secure. All 
of our race are of one mind with our 
Yankee philosopher on that subject : 

For what avail the plough or sail, 
Or land or life, if Freedom fail ? 

But it is not freedom that has 
made our nations great. ["Hear, hear."] 



The Americans 21 

It may be that there are in these 
very days of ours special reasons to 
remember that the mighty national 
structures we have reared would 
soon crumble did they not repose 
on the solid characteristic Anglo- 
Saxon virtues of morality, law, or- 
der, and equal justice alike to the 
richest and the poorest. The use 
of liberty is to guarantee and defend 
all these, and unless it does it is 
worthless, and must perish from the 

earth. [Applause.] 

It is pleasant to see our Canadian 
neighbor here, from the province 
which gave such a stormy greeting 
to the young Queen sixty years ago, 
where now the swords of Mont- 
calm and Wolfe, peacefully crossed, 
hang below the cross of St. George, 



22 The Colonials and 

and with them the hearts of all 
Canada, French and English alike. 

[Applause.] 

One of our writers had the temer- 
ity to describe the French Cana- 
dian as belonging still to the period 
of Louis Quatorze. He was mis- 
taken. The French Canadian, as 
seen here to-night, belongs neither 
to the period of Louis Quatorze nor 
to the nineteenth century. What 
he really is is a twentieth-century 

American ! [Laughter and applause.] 

It may strike you as American 
brag when we speak of the Austra- 
lians also as our neighbors ;• but it 
is n't. The geographical center of 
the United States is not near the 
Mississippi, as so many suppose. 
["Hear."] It is not St. Louis, not 



The Americans 23 

even Denver, in the Rockies. It is 
San Francisco. Measure eastward 
from that lovely harbor on the 
Pacific to New York, and measure 
westward to the extremest island 
belonging to the United States, and 
you will have traversed about the 
same distance. [Laughter.] But we 
would like to be a little more neieh- 
borly still. We hope that soon, "by 
and with the consent of the Senate," 
when the Australian comes sailing 
eastward home, he may feel that he 
is at least beginning to reach the 
estates of some of the family when, 
in mid-Pacific, the Stars and Stripes 
wave their welcome to him at 

Honolulu. ["Hear, hear."] 

I am admonished that this toast to 
the visitors includes the ladies, but 
5 



24 The Colonials and 

some worthier person should re- 
spond to that, from whose tongue 
would come more trippingly what 
we all feel ; and I shall venture but a 
word about it. We are very proud 
of the American ladies you are cap- 
turing and bringing over to Eng- 
land, but we are also getting a little 
uneasy. We value your appre- 
ciation, but we are alarmed at 

your acquisitiveness. ["Hear, hearV'] 

We don't want to spare you so 
many, and if your conquests con- 
tinue in the present progressive 
ratio, the prospect at home grows 

Serious. [Laughter.] 

I venture one word more — as re- 
spectful as it is sincere. The longest, 
wisest, most progressive, most pros- 
perous, and happiest reign in the 



The Americans 25 

whole long history of the English 
monarchy is that of the gracious 
Lady who now occupies the throne. 
God keep her there for many, many 
years yet to come. [Applause.] 



From the Speech of 



"THERE WAS A WAR IN AMERICA 
FOR THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY." 



From the Speech of Sir Wilfrid Lau- 
rier, Premier of the Dominion of 
Canada, Hotel Cecil, London, Do- 
minion Day, June 29, 1897. 

YOU have stated that we share the conti- 
nent of North America with a great na- 
tion of kindred race, but with which the rela- 
tions of England have not always been of the 
most satisfactory character. Since I have 
been in England, within the last few days, it 
seems to me that I have found evidences not 
a few that there are perhaps in the minds of 



Sir Wilfrid Laurier 27 

public men in England, and not only in the 
minds of public men, but in the minds of 
the people at large, some apprehensions of a 
latent sentiment on the part of the American 
nation not altogether friendly to her mother 
land. I would say without any hesitation at 
all that the sentiment which prevails among 
the American nation is a sentiment of affection 
and of reverence, though unfortunately there 
still remain many causes of friction between 
the two nations. The memories of the unfor- 
tunate state of things which prevailed under 
the old regime and which led to the war of 
independence have not altogether been for- 
gotten. The rancor created by the war is still 
living in the minds of the American people. 

This might have been cast away, but unfor- 
tunately, as we know in our own generation, 
there was a civil war in America — a civil war 
waged, I am sure, in the minds of all men to- 
day, for as noble a cause as ever excited men 
to fight — for the abolition of slavery; yet it 
is a matter of history, strange as it may seem 
to us in these days, that at that period the 



2 8 From the Speech of 

sympathies of the civilized world were not in- 
clined on the side of the cause of freedom. 
If I may be permitted to speak my own mind 
— and I do so because what I state here I 
have often stated in my own country, and I 
do not know how to flatter — I have always 
said in Canada that the attitude maintained 
by England and by Canada was neither worthy 
of Canada nor of England at that time. But 
if there were a spirit of friction, rancor, and 
enmity at work at that time let me say at once 
that those enmities have been, to a large ex- 
tent, removed by the conduct of the Queen of 
England herself. In the worst days of the war, 
when the opinion was prevalent in the United 
States of America that the English people 
were not as friendly to them as they ought 
to be, the opinion was also prevalent that the 
heart of the Queen of England was engaged 
on the side of liberty. In the worst days of 
the war, in a poem addressed to the English 
people by the most American of all poets, J. 
G. Whittier, while reproving England for her 
want of sympathy with a cause which has al- 



Sir Wilfrid Laurier 29 

ways been dear to the heart of Great Britain, 
he paid this warm tribute to Her Majesty : 

We bow the heart, if not the knee, 
To England's Queen, God bless her. 

Only a few years later, at the close of the 
war, when the hand of the assassin struck down 
the great and wise man who had carried his 
nation safely through the awful crisis, the 
Queen herself, then in the first years of her 
own bereavement, sent a letter of condolence 
and sympathy to the wife of the martyred 
President. That letter from a widow to a 
widow appealed to the American heart. It 
brought tears to the eyes of strong men; it 
caused tears to stain the furrowed faces of 
many veterans. Sir, this letter of the Queen 
did more to erase the bitterness that had been 
caused by the attitude of the British people 
than anything else could possibly have done. 
There is more. At that time we did not know, 
as we now do, the history of the diplomacy 
on this matter, but we know now, thanks to 
the researches which have been made, that on 



30 Speech of Sir Wilfrid Laurier 

a previous occasion — on the occasion of the 
unfortunate Trent affair — when the sacred 
soil of England — because her ships are part 
of her soil — had been invaded by Americans 
to abstract forcibly from the soil of England 
men who were guests of England — when the 
dignity of England forced them to claim back 
those prisoners — we know that the hand of 
Her Majesty herself corrected the despatch of 
her foreign minister and erased every offensive 
word from it, and left it in such a state that it 
was possible for the American nation to sur- 
render without any surrender of dignity. 



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